Thursday, February 23, 2006

"There was another, simpler, even primitive reason for the overwhelming emotion the Pope evoked [on his first trip back to Poland after his election as Pope]. It was nicely articulated by an anonymous Polish miner who, when asked why anyone should be religious in a communist state, replied 'To praise the Mother of God and to spite those bastards.'"

And I remember very well who the members of Congress, the pundits, the other vermin were, back in the 1980s, when President Reagan was conducting the death struggle with the Soviet Union, who, as now, "blamed America first". They are the same bastards who are fighting President Bush every step of the way as he conducts the death struggle with Al Qaeda.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

I am currently reading Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II by George Weigel. In describing the reaction of the eastern European regimes and their Soviet puppet masters to the election of Pope John Paul II, Weigel relates the following anecdotes and comment on p. 269 of the trade paperback edition:

"The Polish communist leadership was also the target of sarcasm from its fraternal socialist ally. At the inaugural Mass, the Soviet ambassador to Italy turned to Polish President Henryk Jablonski and acidly observed that the greatest achievement of the Polish People's Republic was to give the world a Polish pope. Giancarlo Pajetta, an Italian communist with much experience in Poland, tried to put the best face on things by suggesting that 'At least our Polish comrades won't have him [Karol Wojtyla] breaking their balls any more.' He was wrong about that, too."